Games & Apps

Board Games:

Math

Shapes Up

In this game fast-paced game, the player starts off by rolling the die to pick their shape. Each player takes turns picking shapes and fitting them together. The first person to completely cover their board with shapes that fit together wins.

Perfection

In this game, players race to fit all twenty-five shapes in the appropriate hole. Players have sixty seconds to place all the shapes before the tray pops, and all the pieces go flying. Players can compete to beat each others best time. If your child is still focusing on distinguishing the different shapes, they can play the game without time pressure. This game is great at helping children develop speed and accuracy when identifying shapes.

Money Bags

The object of this game, is to be the player with the most money in the end. The game starts by having one player roll the die and then move spaces. The amount of money depicted on the space determines the amount of money that player earned for that turn. Then, the player spins the spinner to determine what coins they are allowed to use, to represent the amount of money they earned. That player then takes the amount of money they earned from the bank. This is an excellent game for your child to practice counting coins. This game will help your child develop the concept of working with money.

Sum Swamp

This is a great game for your child to enhance their addition and subtraction fluency. The first player rolls the three dice to create a number sentence. The highest number die is first, the operation die is second, and then the lowest number die is last. Depending on what the operation die rolls, the player will add or subtract accordingly and move ahead that exact number of spaces. The winner is determined by the first person to reach the finish line.

Dino Math Tracks

This game gives your child more experience with place value. The first player starts by rolling four white number cubes. The player takes these number cubes and arranges them in the colored place value box to make a four-digit number. Each player then moves their colored dinosaur, according to the number in their colored place value box. The object of the game is for the player to get all four of their dinosaurs under the colored bridge. This game is great for children of all ages, because it allows you to play with two-digit numbers for younger children, or four-digit numbers with older children.

Literacy

Go to Press! A Grammar Game

In this game, players pretend to be editors working for a newspaper company. The editors move through the different departments, editing the various headlines. The first person to edit all the errors and make it back to the boss's office wins.Educational Learning Games- $19.94Toys R' Us- $23.99Overstock- $26.49

Blurt!

Blurt! puts students rapid vocabulary recall to the test! In this game, players take turns reading clues out loud and compete to call out the correct vocabulary word. The more correct answers you blurt out, the farther ahead you move on the board.

Cooking Up Sentences!

This game is a creative way for your child to review the different parts of speech! First, the player picks a recipe card to determine the different parts of speech needed, to make the recipe. The player then spins and moves around the board, while drawing parts of speech cards. The first player to complete a sentence recipe and read it aloud wins!

Hidden Hints

This game will give your child practice in making inferences and drawing conclusions. Players start by picking a hint card and placing it in the briefcase, without peeking. Then, the player will draw and answer a context clue card. Once a player answers three questions correctly about their mystery object, they earn a hint. The first player to solve their mystery wins the game.

Smart Mouth

The rules to this game are quite simple and its a great way for your child to practice word work and spelling. Each player picks out two letters. One letter will be the first letter in the word and the other letter picked will be the last letter in the word. The first person to shout out a word gets the two letter tiles. The player with the most letter tiles in the end, wins the game.

References:

Websites:

Math

IXL

IXL is a wonderful at home resource for your child. The Homepage is organized nicely by grade level. Once you click on second grade, you will be able to see a list of concepts that are focused on in second grade. Your child can than pick on an individual skill that he/she would like to work on. From there, your child can work on practice problems to develop their skills. As a parent, this is a great way for you to get an idea of what concepts they have a firm understanding of and what concepts they need more practice with.

Funbrain

Funbrain is a game board themed website, that will allow your child to practice their basic math skills, while playing interactive arcade games. The website organizes the activities for your child based on their skill level, that they are asked to identify before they start playing. This assures that your child is given activities that are an appropriate fit for their skill level. As your child completes each activity, they will move around the game board, with each activity increasing in difficulty.

PBS Kids

PBS Kids offers a variety of math games that touch on every basic math topic you can think of. The great thing about this site, is that a lot of the games themes are based off of characters in PBS shows. Some of the math topics touched upon in the games are telling time, patterns, measurement, and shapes. If your child doesn't like to practice math, this is an excellent way to get them to do so because the math is disguised behind some of their favorite characters!

Brain POP Jr.

This website focuses on students from kindergarten through third grade. This is one of my favorite websites because of the instructional videos that are provided. The videos are silly and engaging and will help your child really develop an understanding of different math concept. This website also offers various games and quizzes, that focus on topics such as number sense, probability, money, and much more. Access to Brain POP Jr. costs $85 a year but the website is currently offering a free trial.

Arcademic Skill Builders

This website is an arcade themed website, that will reinforce your child's concepts of addition, subtraction, time, and money. When your child enters this website, the first thing he/she will need to do is view the games by grade level. Once your child selects second grade, he/she will have a variety of games to choose from. The thing I like best about this website is that after you finish a game, it tells you your accuracy rate and the number of problems you completed in one minute. At the end of the game, it will also show your child the questions that were missed and the correct answers to them. Overall, this is a great tool for your child to use to keep track of their progress.

Literacy

Starfall

This website is an amazing resource that is used in a lot of schools. One of the great things about this site is that it is rich with free, quality activities. Starfall is a phonics based website that will give your child practice developing and expanding upon their reading skills. This website gives your child the option to read a variety of different genres. Since your 2nd grader is already reading, I recommend that they click the "It's Fun to Read" or the "I'm Reading" link. From there, they can choose from a variety of stories and activities to strengthen their reading skills.

Game Goo

Game Goo is a really creative and free literacy games website. I like the website because on the homepage, it clearly separates the games by three different skill levels. A lot of the games focus on creating grammatically correct sentences, which is great for all second graders to work on. This website also offers a poetry game that I highly recommend for you child to play.

Harcourt Trophies

The activities on this website are separated by grade level. Most of the activities on this website will review a topic, and then have your child take a quiz on the information. One of my favorite aspects of this website is that it gives your child a references list of topics to write about. This is something they can look over at home, to give them ideas for the next day.

Literacy Zone

Literacy Zone is a very unique literacy website. This website separates its content by category. Within each category is a variety of games. Whats so unique about this website is that all the games are compiled from other websites. So within each category you are getting the best games from all over the web.

ABCya!

This website is great for students of any age! Whats special about this website is that it gives your child more practice with their sight words. This website will provide your child with multiple games that focus on sight words. The sight words that are focused on in each game are selected according to the grade level. Another interesting aspect of this website, is that it provides your child with games that will teach them some basic Spanish. The Spanish games will help your child to see some of the connections between Spanish and the English language.

References:

Apps

Math

TanZen Lite

This app takes classic tangrams and brings them to life. Players pick a tangram puzzle to solve by manipulating the seven different pieces. This game will help to develop your child's sense of visual and spatial relationships.

Mathmateer

Mathmateer will test your child's basic math skills, in a really engaging manner. The goal of this app is for the player to earn enough money to build a rocket by doing a variety of basic math problems. Your child will be able to build and design their own rocket to complete missions in space. The missions consist of a variety of math problems involving money, telling time, shapes, ect. This app will really sharpen your child's basic math skills, while providing them with an entertaining experience. ITunes- $0.99

Symmetry Shuffle

The Symmetry Shuffle app will help to develop your child's spatial reasoning and problem solving skills. Players must match objects to the background by sliding, flipping, and rotating the objects. Parents this is a must buy app! Your child won't hesitate to use this app because they won't even realize that they are learning, because they are having so much fun.

Montessori Geometry

This app is a must have for your child. Not only does it provide geometry related games but it also provides geometry instruction. This app contains lessons on two-dimensional shapes, three-dimensional shapes, symmetry, and so much more. Your child will attempt to solve geometry related riddles and real-world problems. This app would make a great study tool for your child if they are struggling with geometry concepts, and a great review tool for those who are not. ITunes- $4.99

Math Bingo

This is another app that does a fabulous job of reinforcing basic math concepts for kids. The goal of this game is for players to get five bugs in a row by answering basic math problems correctly. There are four different games you can choose from. The four different games involve subtraction, addition, multiplication, and division problems. For your second grader, I would recommend having them focus on the addition and subtraction games.

Literacy

Bookworm is an excellent app for students to practice spelling and building their vocabulary. Players search for letters to link together, to form words. Players feed the word to the bookworm, so the bigger the word, the more points they earn. Advanced players can choose to use the timer, while beginners can opt to play without a time limit. ITunes- $2.99

This game is great practice for students who struggle with identifying the 5W's of a story. In this game, players read a story and pay close attention to the who, what, where, when, and why elements of the story. At the end of the story, the player is asked a detail question, based on the story that they read. If the player guesses the correct answer, they get to place a marker on their bingo card. It takes five markers in a row to win the game. There is three levels of difficulty which makes this app great for your child in second grade and beyond.

Second graders and students of all ages can really struggle with understanding homophones. In this game, students pretend to be magicians that use spell books, to bring statutes of animals to life. The player must read the sentence and correctly identify the homophone that best fits, in order to bring the statue to life.

Toontastic

Toontastic is a creative app that allows children to animate and record their own story. First, the app teaches players about the elements of a story and walks them through the process of creating their own story. Children can pick from the various characters to illustrate their story. Players can record their own voice, while moving the characters around the screen, to create their story. Once they are finished making their story, children can play back their story and share it with their friends and family.

Wurdle

Wurdle is a classic crossword style game that will help enhance you child's reading and spelling abilities. The object of the game is to find and trace as many words in the allotted time. Beginners start on a 4x4 style grid and can increase the size of the grid, as their skills advance. ITunes- $1.99